Nuclear power will not go away, but its role may never be more than marginal

To the public at large, the history of nuclear power is mostly a history of accidents: Three Mile Island, the 1979 partial meltdown of a nuclear reactor in Pennsylvania caused by a faulty valve, which led to a small release of radioactivity and the temporary evacuation of the area; Chernobyl, the 1986 disaster in the Ukraine in which a chain reaction got out of control and a reactor blew up, spreading radioactive material far and wide; and now Fukushima. But the field has been shaped more by broad economic and strategic trends than sudden shocks.

[The MSM still writes about only two, now three, of the many nuclear problem sites.]

... In liberalised energy markets, building nuclear power plants is no longer a commercially feasible option: they are simply too expensive. Existing reactors can be run very profitably; their capacity can be upgraded and their lives extended. But forecast reductions in the capital costs of new reactors in America and Europe have failed to materialise and construction periods have lengthened. Nobody will now build one without some form of subsidy to finance it or a promise of a favourable deal for selling the electricity. And at the same time as the cost of new nuclear plants has become prohibitive in much of the world, worries about the dark side of nuclear power are resurgent, thanks to what is happening in Iran.

[There are links to six articles along the right side of the article]